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Castlevania III vs Civilization vs Sonic the Hedgehog vs Street Fighter II 2009
Results Round One Saturday, April 11th, 2009 Ulti's Analysis Of these three polls, which loser is the most impressive? * http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=1610 * http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=1638 * http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=1637 Street Fighter 2, right? Sonic 2 was embarrassed at the hands of Mario World, and Mario RPG was similarly embarrassed at the hands of Chrono Trigger. Now you'd think a game that goes 43-57 against Mario RPG could beat a game out getting SFFd half to death, but this Street Fighter 2 we're talking about. Street Fighter is quickly joining the Halo/GTA list of things to never ever trust in contests, as evidenced by this match. Now this isn't to say Street Fighter was some heavy favorite, because there was a good case to be made for Sonic. An SFF beating at the hands of Mario World doesn't tell us much, and GameFAQs doesn't care about any fighting game not named Smash Brothers. Stop denying it, because it's true. But even with the nagging feeling Sonic could do something here, Street Fighter 2 ended up the consensus pick because of the format. Games don't = characters, but it's impossible to ignore how badly Sonic characters have all sucked in the past two fourway character contests. Every single one of them, especially Sonic himself. In 2007, Sonic nearly lost to Squall twice. Then in 2008, he laid one of the biggest contest eggs of all time and not only lost to Kirby, but let Kirby walk all over him from start to finish. It was never close. Sonic's characters couldn't do squat in this format, but his games might be strong? Street Fighter 2 might not be some contest legend, but surely it could beat a game whose characters have all sucked it up in this format, right? Then the match actually started, and it was Super Mario RPG > Street Fighter 2 all over again, right down to the "OMG SF2 LOST?!" whining. Only this time, Street Fighter 2 didn't build up a lead only to lose. Sonic ran all over Street Fighter right from the opening bell, and it was never a match en route to Sonic's easy win here. The simple explanation is to credit Sonic games as being stronger than the characters, but the simple truth is GameFAQs does not and will not ever care about fighting games. It's been proven time and time again, though this match does bring up an interesting point about voters giving respect to a series' progenitor. We've actually seen this before with stuff like Final Fantasy and the original Zelda being strong despite people not liking them too much, but the original Sonic never got a chance to prove itself until this beating of SF2. Also of note here, for once, is that the weaker games gave us a good match. Castlevania 3 led Civilization for a good two hours before collapsing, which is a damn shame. Castlevania 3 is a brilliant game, but Symphony of the Night truly is the only game in that series with any strength. Some people actually blamed Castlevania 3 for Street Fighter's loss here, which is about as out of this world as it gets. Match Trends Ngamer's Same Day Analysis Match Prediction We've got a real treat in store for tonight- a matchup between two relatively strong, relatively evenly matched games that are independent enough of the fodder below them for this result to just maybe be as legit as a straight up 1v1. In other words, an extremely rare occurrence for the SB era! My fellow crewmates have already done a fine job of going through the points in favor for either of these two games, so let me just quickly say that I agree with what appears to be the general sentiment. Namely, that Sonic's character appeal and name value would have made this an easy victory for him 3 or 4 or 5 years back, but that now the ball seems to be almost entirely in SFII's court. Sonic Team has been looking worse and worse in each Character Battle since '05 and frankly I can't see why a classic era Sonic game would be expected to perform better than a classic era Mega Man title in the year 2009, and so I'd be very nervous if I were a Sonic fan in the wake of that MM2... unpleasantness. On the flip side Street Fighter is more relevant at this very moment than it has been at any point this decade, Ryu has proven himself to be a dangerously independent entry that thrives in this LFFfest of a format, and then the bracket comes out and we see that SFII has drawn the most fortuitous placement since... well, since 2007 Ryu. Check out this yellow brick road to the 5th round: an easy advancement over Castlevania/Civ, an easy win against a Sonic that gets early 90s platformer'd to death by Mario 3, then a perfect chance to capitalize on the Mario 3/SMW/MM3 split (assuming FF1 spoils FF4's chances), and THEN a chance to play the sore thumb spoiler once again in a totally insane Zelda 1/Mario 1/Mario 3 battle. I'll give you that SFII isn't honestly all that strong, but I think that Ryu '07 and Kirby '08 proved that in this format, you don't need to be as long as you continue to draw the right opponents. So that's what my bracket is banking on, and it all starts with a convincing win over Sonic 1! All that's left is to take a look at this match pic before picking my percents. Hm... Civ just fades into the background, what a nothing of a pic, CV is too mashed together, I love Ryu and Ken in their poses with the classic SFII logo, but I have to admit what catches the eye here is that large and in charge Sonic. And since its best chance in this one is to play up the "Sonic vs Ryu" angle, I'm going to have to give S1 a little bit more credit than I'd been planning. Let's go with, oh say * Street Fighter 2 - 36.76% * Sonic the Hedgehog - 33.23% * Castlevania III - 19.79% * Civilization - 10.13% Yeah, that seems about right. Could definitely stand to see SF2 blow it out of the water by even more though! (PS - Alright, so actually I got cold feet and only took SF2 to make the 4th round this year, not the semi-finals. I still maintain that's one of the smartest upset routes you could have gone with though!) Next Day Review I'm still having a tough time wrapping my mind around that result yesterday. Going purely by percentage, SFII had a very respectable day, and in a direct comparison to Castlevania I'd have said it did exceptionally well. But not only did it not win the day outright, it lost in a worse than Ulti blowout! How could Sonic post a performance like that after looking like junk the past two seasons? The most reasonable explanation would seem to be that because no one actually cares about these old games (except maybe Mario 1/3/Zelda/Tetris), anything with strong name/series recognition is going to rock faces. (In that case though, what the heck happened to MM2?) If that's correct, then SFII and its more "hardcore" (maybe?) fanbase should still be fine, since Mario is going to be arriving to suck up all of that apathy vote next round. But if on the other hand this is a case of people actually really loving 2D Sonic and only anti-voting the character because his last generation of games has been so poor, then... well, let's just say it's going to be a long season for people like yo and myself, who made a point of betting against Sonic wherever possible in our brackets. 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